In the business world, organizations regularly implement and redefine processes as a response to various issues.  This is usually done in an effort to have standardized approaches so that stakeholders know how to address various situations in a consistent manner.  In this week’s podcast, we’ll address the delicate balance of applying process and encouraging people to think for themselves in challenging situations.

What prompted you to make this a topic for this week’s podcast?

   It’s a debate that I’ve seen for quite some time, particularly in the consulting industry.
As organizations grow, they start to see inconsistencies in how various individuals handle situations.
Let me give an example.  Let’s say you run a clothing store and you see that a lot of people purchase clothes on Fridays and return the clothes after the weekend.
You start to see a pattern and you notice that the clothes that are brought back are worn.
You realize that people are purchasing clothes to wear to a weekend event and then returning those clothes on Monday and getting their money back.  They’re abusing your return policy to wear clothes for free.
So you institute a policy that any returns of clothing must have the tags still attached.  You know that people aren’t going to wear the clothing to a function with the tags on.  So if they remove the tags to wear in public, the item can’t be returned.
Now there are many of situations where a customer legitimately might take the tags off and want to return the item without planning to fraud the store.
Let’s say I purchase as suit jacket.  I tried it on at the store and it fits fine.  Then, when I go to wear it out to dinner, I take off the tags and put it on and my wife points out that there’s a bad tear in the back.
I didn’t see that when I tried it on in the store.
So I end up wearing something else to dinner and the next day, I go to return it to the store.  Since I took the tags off, they won’t allow me to return it, even though there’s an unsightly tear in the back.
So this is where we start talking about exceptions within policies.  The store could create the exception that if the item is damaged, it can be returned without the tags.
But then this creates incentives for people to just tear the clothing items after they’ve worn them in order to be able to make a return.
The point is that we need policies and procedures to ensure consistency and to avoid having people take advantage of things.
But we also need to allow flexibility and common sense along with that.

So what are the considerations of this in the consulting industry?

One of the things clients like about hiring consultants, besides having specialized knowledge in certain areas, is the fact that a firm often has a well defined and proven methodology.
Many firms use that as a selling point and use their methodology as a competitive advantage.  “Our firm follows a step-by-step methodology to make sure that your project is done on time and under budgetâ€.
And I believe that having a well defined methodology is a good thing. But it should be driven more by guidelines and parameters rather than a formal and inflexible process that doesn’t allow for exceptions.
Here’s an example that I saw once in a consulting environment. I knew a project manager at a client who followed a strict change management policy after business requirements had been defined.
So any time we had a change, no matter how small, he completed a change request form, documented the impact to the project regardless how small and submitted it to the client.
Change requests usually cause significant overhead for the client.  They have to submit changes up through management to get approvals and signatures, so every one of these can cost fairly significant time and money.  Besides, they get the feeling they’re being nickel and dimed with every one of these small changes.
After a while,